Halli, Robert W., Jr. "The Persuasion of the Coy Mistress." Philological Quarterly, 80 (2001): 57-70. Opening section of article.
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There is general agreement that Andrew Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress" is a carpe diem, invitation-to-love, seduction poem couched in a syllogistic, or seemingly-syllogistic, argument: if we lived forever, your virginity would be appropriate; but we do not live forever, and therefore we should engage in sexual activity.1 To this point commentators have assumed that the basis on which the speaker persuades the mistress to yield is the physical pleasure of sexual activity. That assumption sets "To his Coy Mistress" apart from Marvell's other poetry in at least two ways. First, it would be the only Marvell poem construed to present a celebration of sexual delight that is only a celebration of sexual delight. Second, it would depart from the pattern of Marvell's major poems which offer competing discourses on their subjects (e.g., innocence and experience in "The Nymph complaining for the death of her Faun," praise and criticism in "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwel's Return from Ireland"). But, if the primary grounds of persuasion is sexual pleasure, then that syllogism does not work. After all, desire for sexual pleasure with a particular partner is not likely to be eliminated by the prospect of spending eternity with that partner. If the syllogism works, then the primary ground of persuasion is not sexual pleasure. The difficulty commentators have had reconciling the poem's imagery, particularly in its third section, with their argument for sexual pleasure is reflected in a plethora of conflicting interpretations of "the dramas of mystery and incoherence."2 Having to treat each image individually, these critics have been unable to produce a coherent organic reading of all the poem's elements. I believe the primary desire of the speaker, his basic ground of persuasion of the mistress to sexual activity, is not sexual pleasure, and is plainly revealed in the opening lines: "Had we but World enough, and Time, / This coyness Lady were no crime" (1-2) .3 The speaker desires extension in time and space beyond the confines of the earthly life span. And I believe the means of its achievement is that proposed in any number of earlier poems, including Shakespeare's sonnets and almost every epithalamion: the procreation of offspring, "That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die."4 The persuasion of procreation does provide a coherent organic reading of all the elements of "To his Coy Mistress."
The impulse toward procreation was very strong in the early modern era. Ambrose Pare opens his book Of the Generation of Man with an explanation of this impulse in terms of religion. "God . . . not onely distinguished mankinde, but all other living creatures also, into a double sex, to wit, of male and female; that so they being moved and enticed by the allurements of lust, might desire copulation, thence to have procreation. For this bountiful Lord hath appointed it as a solace unto every living creature against the most certaine and fatall necessity of death: that for as much as each particular living creature cannot continue for ever, yet they may endure by their species or kinde by propagation and succession of creatures, which is by procreation, so long as the world endureth."5 Those who argue for the persuasion from pleasure fail to note that, in the seventeenth century, sexual pleasure was not viewed as an appropriate end in itself. Lawrence Stone says that "it was not until the eighteenth century that the pleasure principle began to be clearly separated from the procreative function."6 Pare makes the relation of means and end absolutely clear: "A certaine great pleasure accompanieth the function of the parts appointed for generation... that the kind may be preserved and kept for ever, by the propagation and substitution of other living creatures of the same kinde."7 This biological imperative was reinforced by a social one. According to Jacques Gelis, "there is nothing worse than to die leaving no progeny."8 Not just Marvell's lovers, but almost all his contemporaries desired extension to eternity through posterity.
As long as "To his Coy Mistress" is seen merely as "the most famous seduction poem in English"9 my procreative reading seems to contradict both logic and the age's social code. In these terms, Berhard Duyfhuizen establishes the possibility of pregnancy as a convincing reason for the refusal of the speaker's overture: "the Mistress' coyness is her only means of protecting what seventeenth-century society defined as her moral and economic value-her virginity. The momentary sensual ecstasy extolled by the speaker carries for the listener the cost of social 'ruin' and possibly pregnancy out of wedlock."10 It is certainly true that the woman is unlikely to be persuaded that sexual activity outside of marriage is desirable on the grounds that through it she may become pregnant. It is also true, however, that such a result would leave the speaker without legitimate issue, acknowledged extension into world enough and time, unless he was married to the mother of his offspring. Despite the universal critical assumption that the speaker is urging the mistress to sexual relations outside the bounds of marriage, there is nothing in the poem itself which necessitates, or even suggests, that conclusion. It is quite possible that the speaker's frustration stems not from the mistress' coyness about engaging in fornication but from her coyness about accepting a proposal of marriage which would sanction sexual relations leading to procreation. These worldly concerns seem more appropriate in "To his Coy Mistress" than they would in other Marvell poems because this poem is more "of the world" than most of Marvell's lyrics. As Thomas Wheeler has noted, "the speaker is not talking to a shepherdess or to a woman whose name implies a pastoral or a mythical setting. She is simply `Lady.' While that form of address seems a bit stilted for a lover, it does not allow the woman to escape into some fictitious literary never-never land. Furthermore, the speaker locates himself in England by his reference to `the Tide of Humber,' a real river, not a name from poetic tradition."11 Even with this reference to the river flowing through Marvell's hometown of Hull there is no reason to read "To his Coy Mistress" autobiographically. There is, however, every reason to note that it embodies a much more "realistic" fiction than we find normally in Marvell's poetry.
The poem's long and leisurely opening section details the optimum circumstance: the immortality of the individuals themselves. If they will live forever in their persons, the lady can remain "coy" or virginal with impunity, and they will extend through "World enough" in lines 3 through 7:
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side
Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide
Of Humber would complain.
"and Time" in lines 7 through 10:
... I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the Conversion of the Jews.
That last event was thought to be one of the signals of the end of "Time," Doomsday, and the beginning of eternity. In this first section, the specific lines whose reading is most clearly affected by my premise of procreation are 11-12: "My vegetable Love should grow / Vaster then Empires, and more slow." The "vegetable" soul of human beings, which we share with plants, lies below our animal, rational, and spiritual souls. According to Cleanth Brooks, and many others, its qualities are growth and propagation.12 I believe that Marvell's contemporary readers would notice that, in the postulated world without death, the lovers do not propagate as they should, but "grow" forever, in a sort of inappropriate vegetative monstrosity: "Vaster then Empires." This excessiveness may also be reflected in the blazon of lines 13-20 in which Marvell's speaker, like Shakespeare's, would immortalize both the exterior and interior beauties of the beloved, whose immortality is "deserve[d]" because of her exquisiteness.13 Although he does not mention procreation, William J. Galperin correctly notes that "the speaker's belligerence in this first section stems . from an erotic instinct seeking to preserve and perpetuate."14
The "if-then" postulate of the opening section is contradicted savagely by the famous bleakness of the second section's "But," and "World enough, and Time" become "Desarts of vast Eternity" (24) in the face of the undeniable extinction of the non-procreative individual:
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try
That long preserv'd Virginity:
And your quaint Honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my Lust.
The Grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
(21-32)
Just as "vegetable Love" "Vaster then Empires" is inappropriate in its non-reproductive excessiveness, so are "Desarts of vast Eternity" inappropriate in their non-reproductive barrenness.15 If the desire of the speaker is solely for sexual delight, lines 25-27 are no persuasion at all. Without reproduction, whether or not they achieve such delight they will lose at death both her "Beauty" and his "ecchoing Song," a male creative impulse embodying the female subject in preservable form. Recollection of Shakespeare's sonnets impresses us with the significance of this failure of the art of poetry and song to immortalize. It leaves us with Shakespeare's only other possibility: begetting children. Although the physical delights of sexual relations involve nerve endings throughout the bodies, the emphasis here is entirely on the destruction of the generative organs: "that long preserv'd Virginity," "your quaint Honour," "my Lust." The words "quaint" and "honour" refer to the female sexual organs, and their linkage with "dust" suggests that, through its parallel linkage with "ashes," "Lust" may well refer to the male sexual organs. The point is not just that the grave ends the possibility of pleasure in embracing, but that it ends the possibility of embracing as a means to the much more important preservation of self through posterity. Although we normally take line 31's "fine" in its modern adjectival sense of "excellent" because of the following parallel with "private" and the later implied contrast of the "But" clause, "The Grave's a fine" makes perfect early modern sense with the word's first two definitions as a substantive in the OED: "Cessation, termination," and "End of life, decease, death."